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Daily industrial news and top headlines for plant and maintenance managers

PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) — Hewlett-Packard Co. is bidding $1.5 billion for data storage provider 3Par Inc., just a week after rival Dell Inc. agreed to acquire the company for $1.13 billion.
HP and Dell have been looking to expand beyond personal computers over the past few years in a search for bigger profits.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The chief executive of a leading Taiwanese LCD screen maker has been barred from leaving the U.S. during a U.S. Justice Department probe into alleged price-fixing, the company said.
Hsinchu-based AU Optronics Corp. said in a statement filed Saturday with Taiwan's Stock Exchange that a U.

ISLE OF WIGHT, Va. (AP) — By 6:15 a.m. most days, Fred's Restaurant once hopped with International Paper workers stopping for a cup of coffee or breakfast before heading on to work the day shift at the paper mill.
"People used to sit in the parking lot and wait for me to unlock the doors at 6 a.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) — After 25 years with General Motors, Renee Pipkins lost her job as an automotive engineer in Michigan last year and decided to hit the road literally.
She and her husband, a retired GM millwright, are taking on new careers as truck drivers, where they see more job security.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Food and Drug Administration chief Margaret Hamburg said Monday her agency is limited by law to a mostly reactive stance on food safety and argued that it needs a more "preventive approach."
Giving a series of network interviews in the wake of the egg and salmonella breakout, Hamburg said the FDA is taking the issue "very, very seriously.

COPIAPO, Chile (AP) — For 33 men found alive after 17 days trapped deep in a copper and gold mine, the toughest challenge now may be preserving their sanity during the months it may take to carve a tunnel big enough for them to get out.
For their families above ground on Monday, euphoria and and more anxiety meant for a sleepless night at the realization that the miners may be stuck until Christmas.

Rangers Die Casting Company, based in Southern California, is a major producer of high quality “no porosity” aluminum die cast parts. They use over 30 DUMORE drill units at the facility for secondary operations, and rely on a hydraulic check system to control the feed rate of each drill.

The 2009 stimulus package, known formally as the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, was designed to give an immediate shot in the arm to an ailing U.S. economy. While the majority of the funds were aimed at activities starting within 120 days of the law's passage, the bulk of actual spending will occur from 2010 through 2013.

The new “Versatile Mount” from Sprinter Marking, Inc. (Zanesville, OH) was engineered to provide manufacturers with a flexible, changeable mount for a variety of positioning applications. Despite its compact size (1-3/8” x 2” x 2”), the company claims it can support substantial weights when secured.

Neptune Chemical Pump Co. (Lansdale, PA) is offering the Series 500 Metering Pumps, which feature a Variable Oil By-pass stroke adjustment that allows for better valve performance than variable-linkage designs. The Series 500 pumps include the ability to be adjusted from 10 to 100 percent of capacity via a micrometer dial, and have EZE-CLEAN valve cartridges that can be removed for cleaning without disturbing piping to the pump.

The Duro-Tank Stainless Steel Recirculating Systems from A.W.T. World Trade (Chicago, IL) are designed for use with a washout sink with biodegradable chemistry to clean a variety of objects. The cleaning solution is applied directly to the part through a one-piece wand and scrub brush, while the closed-loop recirculating system uses progressive multi-stage filtering to extend solvent life.

Hitachi America, Ltd. (Tarrytown, NY) has announced the WJ200 series of inverters, which are sensorless vector (SLV) drives capable of 200 percent or greater torque across the speed range. According to the company, speed regulation at low speed has been dramatically improved, and fluctuation is half that of previous models.

SEATTLE (AP) — PC maker Dell Inc. said Thursday its net income improved 16 percent in the fiscal second quarter as businesses replaced aging technology, though a key profit measure fell.
The majority of Dell's revenue comes from selling technology to other companies, so its results offer a gauge of the economic recovery in the form of business spending on technology.

NEW YORK (AP) — Would you buy stock in a company that has hemorrhaged tens of billions of dollars for years and run through three bosses in quick succession just because it's turned a profit for a few months?
That is essentially what General Motors will ask investors to do when it takes itself public again with one of the largest initial stock offerings ever.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Wyoming no longer is the nation's deadliest place to work, a dubious distinction that now belongs to Montana.
The number of workers killed on the job in Montana increased from 40 in 2008 to 50 in 2009, according to figures released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney said Thursday that declining work is forcing it to lay off about a quarter of its hourly labor force at a repair plant, prompting the workers' union to question whether the company is violating a federal court order barring it from moving jobs out of the state.

Caterpillar Inc. officials said Thursday they don't expect a double-dip recession because the world's central banks haven't made major errors and the economy has been improving throughout 2010, especially in the developing world.
New CEO Doug Oberhelman and other executives met with analysts in New York and discussed the opportunities ahead for the world's largest maker of construction and mining equipment.

MUMBAI, India (AP) — The U.S. says it is not pressuring India to drop claims against an American corporation linked to the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, trying to cool a furore over leaked emails that suggest high-level heavying in advance of President Barack Obama's November India trip.
The outcry over the e-mail exchange between a U.

Titan Industries is the world's fifth largest and India's leading manufacturer of watches. Corporately based in Tamil Nadu, India, the company has manufactured more than a 100 million watches to date and has a customer base of over 80 million.
The umbrella brand Titan is one of India's leading watch brands that brought about a paradigm shift in the Indian watch market, offering quartz technology with international styling.

Balluff ’s BunkerProx is a rugged, “self-bunkering” M18 inductive proximity sensor designed to survive longer in abusive welding applications without external protection. The BunkerProx has a strong, thick housing that boosts the ability to withstand repeated mechanical impact and serves as an intermittent heat sink to shield the sensor electronics from intense heat.